Is there any way to Filter by video length?

[dfdfgsfgsda]

I'm trying to identify and tag the live photos from my iPhone. These are short videos 3-5 seconds that are captured along with a regular photo.

Is there any way to filter movies by duration using the Filter tab? For example, only show movies shorter than 6 seconds in duration?

[jch2103]

I don't have an iPhone, so these are just guesses. If you can find an iPhone metadata tag that records video length, you could use that. A fallback would be to use file size as a proxy for video length.

[Tveloso]

When I first started out trying to distinguish between "real" videos, and videos that are the video component of an iOS "Live Photo", I too tried using the duration of the video as a means of identifying that.  But I soon found that this was not really reliable.  I couldn't seem to find a suitable threshold for that duration value, that could really distinguish between the two.

Then I hit upon the Encoded Pixels Dimensions (that tag is QuickTime::TrackAperture\EncodedPixelsDimensions)...I found that "real" videos were usually 1920x1080 (both Portrait and Landscape oriented videos carry those dimensions - which I'm not sure I understand yet), while the "Live Photo Clips" were usually 1920x1440 or 1440x1080 (that 1440 edge seemed to indicate that it was a "Live Photo Clip").  But here too, there were exceptions - other (usually smaller) dimensions were also found to be "Live Photo Clips" (Photos shared via iCound Photos, or sent via Text Messages, had reduced resolutions from what the originals had), and those were being missed by this filtering.

Now I'm using what I found to be a UUID that "connects" the two files of a Live Photo...the Still and the Video both have a UUID in common (and "real" videos lack that Tag).  In the MOV file, the tag is QuickTime::ItemList\1.3\ContentIdentifier in IMatch 2021.  Due to recent changes in ExifTool, that's a "new location" for that UUID, so if you've been using IMatch for a while, and have indexed Live Photo Files in prior versions, you may also need to check tag QuickTime::ItemList\content.identifier\ContentIdentifier for older files.

This is done using the Filter Panel...you should definitely spend some time reading the The Filter Panel Help Topic...in particular the section on the Value Filter.  The IMatch Help System is absolutely outstanding!

I'm still experimenting with a proper Workflow for dealing with iOS Live Photos, but at this initial stage, I load all .MOV Files into a Videos directory in my Ingest Folder, and then once IMatch has indexed them, I use a Value Filter on the appropriate ContentIdentifier Tag, and select the Files with value radio button.  I am reasonably sure that the files this filter returns are Live Photo Clips, and I then move them from the Videos Directory to the LivePhotoClips Directory of my Ingest folder.

[PandDLong]

That was super helpful.  Thanks so much for writing such a fulsome post.

Michael

[Tveloso]

Thank you Michael.

As I looked into this further, I found that there are several other "content identifier" Tags where Files in my IMatch database have that UUID stored.

I posted a description of the Filter I'm now using to check for Live Photo Clips, in the Tips & Tricks board:

        https://www.photools.com/community/index.php?topic=11894.0

Hopefully it will be helpful, and others can refine it / flesh it out further, to more properly work with those types of files.